GE, Whirlpool, Kenmore oh my

(If you missed the Big News announced on Friday, read that first or this won't make sense)

Having always been a renter (until now) I haven't had a lot of experience with shopping for appliances (well not for myself----plenty for clients). Let me tell you, it's overwhelming. Do you want white, black, stainless, panel-ready? Do you want top freezer, bottom freezer, side-by-side, french door? What features do you want? Energy efficient? Are you confused yet?

I want to share our experience to hopefully help some of you in the future and just because it was a big part of buying our first home.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? I knew the existing appliances were a mix: black dishwasher, black and white range, and beige? fridge. The fridge wasn't staying so we knew we would be shopping for that but we decided to go ahead and get a new range to match as well. The homeowners were also taking the washer and dryer so that was on our list too.

Now, I knew I didn't want black appliances to match the dishwasher because I think a black fridge just stands out way to much (especially since I plan to paint the cabinets white eventually). We decided stainless would be the next best option.

Here comes the tricky part. I really wanted a side-by-side because in my opinion they have a better layout and french door options were out of our price range. We found one that had been "returned" (basically the customer ordered it, got it delivered and didn't like it) and marked way down-- like from $1300 to $800. It was perfect but I was so concerned about the width fitting that I overlooked the height. It was about 1 1/2" too tall. We were back to square one. We now realized we had to work with the even more limiting existing cabinetry dimensions of 36" width and 67" height. Well friends, the new "standard" fridge height is more like 69". So there were very few side by sides that would fit and those were way out of our budget. Ultimately we decided on this Whirlpool one. I still love the ones we picked it was just a challenge to get to that point. I can't wait for delivery :D

 Then it was time to choose a washer and dryer. I didn't have as much of a preference on this. We were lucky enough to have brand new front-loader Frigidaire washer and dryer in our apartment so I knew I had been spoiled by that. But it also helped me realize what I didn't like so much about front-loaders. They are very popular and you will also pay up for them quite a bit. Not to mention they are more work to clean (the ring can get really gross) and since ours were stacked we had to basically squat to load it. Instead we focused on choosing an energy efficient model since we will be using them so often. I told Tim that if possible, I would still love to have a digital display.

Lucky me, they had a dryer model on the floor that was marked down for "open box" (don't worry its all still under warranty) that was an upgraded version of what we were looking at. We decided to get the larger dryer and still awesome, but smaller capacity washer since that was a better fit for our budget.

(yes I know I spelled Whirlpool wrong...I didn't want to redo the whole thing)

So we ended up with all Whirlpool appliances and I will be doing a review down the road after we've used everything

Tell me about your appliance shopping experiences. Did you have to adjust your wants and needs based on your existing kitchen?? How did you narrow down the million options out there?